Keep your email inbox clutter-free

May 20, 2014

Trying to keep your keep on top of your inbox is a daily struggle as we all battle with high volumes of emails. Most employees simply aren’t trained to tackle the amount of emails they get and sometimes don’t even know how to use Outlook very well.

Here are some easy ways that you can handle and manage a full email inbox:

Every time you read an email, decide if it’s relevant to you. If it
isn’t, delete it immediately.

If a request in an email will take literally minutes to do, do it there and then. There is no point in procrastinating.

If the request is going to take longer than a few minutes and you are in a position to delegate tasks, pass it on to someone else.

Requests that won’t take long to do but can’t be actioned immediately should be placed on a to-do list. Also, set a time for when to do this.

Cut down your email load by creating rules in your inbox and placing emails in separate folders. Once you have finished with an email you want to keep, place it in a folder so that you can easily reference it in the future (remember to think about email archiving).

Get all your unread emails down to zero every day but don’t spend every available minute monitoring your inbox when you can be doing something more productive.